What is cave mining?

Cave mining refers to all mining operations in which the orebody caves naturally after undercutting and the caved material is recovered through drawpoints. This includes block caving, panel caving, inclined-drawpoint caving, and front caving.

What is open pit gold mining?

Open-pit mining, or open-cast mining is a surface mining technique of extracting rock or minerals from the earth by their removal from an open pit or borrow. When this occurs, the exhausted mines are sometimes converted to landfills for disposal of solid wastes.

What is the difference between a cave and a mine?

A Cave has formed naturally over eons. They are carved slowly out of solid rock, generally limestone or dolomite. These may include slate, limestone, iron ore, silica, lead, chalk, tin even uranium. Mines are man-made structures.

What is block cave mining used for?

Touted as the deep mining method of the future, block caving is an underground mass-mining method that allows for the bulk extraction of large, relatively lower-grade ore deposits that are vertical in orientation.

What is cave propagation?

Cave propagation is a complex process due to interacting variables including mine geometry, rock mass heterogeneity and complex structural networks and stress fields. The open pit, production level geometry and production draw strategy where also important factors for cave and subsidence growth.

Why is open pit mining bad?

Open-pit mining includes blasting of soil and vegetation to access underground ore layers or coal seams [17]. Consequently, this method produces large volumes of mining waste, including soil and overburden, which increase the vulnerability of mining environments to soil erosion and pollution.

How deep can an open-pit mine go?

The Bingham Canyon Mine, also known as the Kennecott Copper Mine, is in the US state of Utah. Originally discovered by Mormon pioneers in the 1800s, it is the deepest open pit mine in the world at over 1.2km deep and covering an area of 7.7km2 (visible from outer-space).

What is the difference between a cave and a grotto?

As nouns the difference between cave and grotto is that cave is a large, naturally-occurring cavity formed underground, or in the face of a cliff or a hillside while grotto is a small cave.

What is an open pit mine used for?

Shown in Fig. 8.8 is an open-pit mine used to explain the process of mining the oil shale. The overburden is drilled and blasted loose over an area above the oil shale zone and the load is then transported to a disposal area.

What is the difference between open pit mining and strip mining?

Strip mining is a practical type of mining when the ore body that is to be extracted is near the surface. Open-pit mining is the process of extracting rock or minerals from the earth through their removal from an open pit or borrow.

What is the history of gold mining in North Carolina?

Reed Gold Mine is the site of the first documented gold find in the United States. From this discovery, gold mining spread gradually to nearby counties and eventually into other southern states. During its peak years gold mining was second only to farming in the number of North Carolinians it employed.

Where are Russia’s most profitable gold mining operations?

Taking top spot is Polyus’ largest mining operation, Olimpiada, located in one of Russia’s most prolific gold mining provinces. The mine began production in 1996 and currently accounts for nearly half of the Moscow-based company’s total gold output.